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Wharton West
The School has launched a satellite
campus on the West Coast with dollars
initially provided by the Dean's
Initiative Fund. Wharton West will
provide executive MBA programs,
executive education programs, faculty
research and student internships from
its San Francisco location, and is a
direct response to market changes in
the United States. "The growth in the
West Coast business base has continued
unabated for a number of decades. It is
much deeper than the dot-com industry,"
explains Bob Mittelstaedt, vice
dean and director of Wharton's Aresty
Institute of Executive Education.
Wharton West is also a response to faculty
and student demand: many faculty
are already doing research with West
Coast companies and Wharton students
want to be where the action is. "Our
students want to spend time understanding
growth industries first hand,"
Harker remarks. Thirty percent of last
year's MBA class headed out West after
graduation. Wharton alumni are also
a strong presence there, with more than
8,000 Wharton graduates calling the
West Coast home.
The idea of Wharton West grew
from a discussion of international
options for the Wharton brand.
Mittelstaedt notes that many schools
were looking abroad, but California was
virtually being ignored. "If California
were on its own, it would be the sixth
largest economy in the world. As such,
it contains a large concentration of
untapped business and education potential."
For these reasons, Wharton
West is illustrative of an ideal reason to
give to the Dean's Initiative Fund: "It's
a one-of-a-kind opportunity to practice
what we preach, and to be part of
something as it grows from the ground
up," says Mittelstaedt.
The first Wharton West executive
MBA student to be accepted to the
program – and the first West Coast
student to forego the long commute
to Philadelphia – is John Balczewski,
a San Francisco resident and senior analyst
at Chevron. He is eager to start his
first WEMBA session in August 2001.
Balczewski researched other schools,
but was drawn to Wharton by its clear
distinction of experience, diversity and
pedagogy. "I don't want to sit passively
and absorb, and since two years is a
big investment in time and money, I'm
looking forward to it being two years
of 'I can't wait to get to class'."
For more information on Wharton
West and WEMBA, visit Wharton Now
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